The Guide for the Perplexed

Thank you for helping us expand this topic!
Simply begin typing or use the editing tools above to add to this article.
Once you are finished and click submit, your modifications will be sent to our editors for review.

Ads by Google

This topic is discussed in the following articles:

commentary of Maimon

In 1770, before he was 20, Maimon wrote an unorthodox commentary on Maimonides’ Moreh nevukhim (The Guide for the Perplexed) that earned him the hostility of fellow Jews. At 25 he traveled to Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), and wandered over Europe until he settled in Posen, Pol., as a tutor. His material insecurity ended in 1790, when he was given residence on...

defense by Ibn Falaquera

Spanish-born Jewish philosopher and translator who propagated a reconciliation between Jewish Orthodoxy and philosophy and defended Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed against the attacks of the traditionalists.

discussed in biography

...he began in 1176 and on which he laboured for 15 years, was his classic in religious philosophy, the Dalālat al-ḥāʾirīn (The Guide for the Perplexed), later known under its Hebrew title as the Moreh nevukhim. A plea for what he called a more rational philosophy of Judaism, it constituted...

example of

biblical exegesis

The great philosopher and codifier Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, 1135–1204) composed, among many other works, his Guide of the Perplexed to help readers who were bewildered by apparent contradictions between the biblical text and the findings of reason. Like his younger contemporary David Qimḥi, he classified some biblical narratives as visionary accounts.

medieval Hebrew literature

...while an entirely different culture arose in eastern Europe. The appearance in 1200 of the Hebrew version, translated from Arabic, of Moses Maimonides’ Moreh Nevukhim (1851–85; The Guide of the Perplexed), which applied Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophy to biblical and rabbinic theology, provoked orthodox circles into opposition to all secular studies. As a result...

place in Jewish philosophy

...who is also the most eminent codifier of Jewish religious law, is to be found in the vast scope of his attempt, in the Dalālat al-hā’irin (The Guide for the Perplexed), to safeguard both religious law and philosophy (the public communication of which would be destructive of the law) without suppressing the issues between them and...

...or Moses ben Maimon, was known to Christians of the Middle Ages as Rabbi Moses. His Dalālat al-hāʾirīn (c. 1190; The Guide for the Perplexed) helped them to reconcile Greek philosophy with revealed religion. For Maimonides there could be no conflict between reason and faith because both come from God; an...

reaction by Aaron ben Elijah

...lore, in three books. In the first book, ʿEtz ḥayyim (1346; “Tree of Life”), modeled after the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides’ Moreh nevukhim (The Guide for the Perplexed), he attempts to create a Karaite counterpart to Maimonides’ Aristotelian outlook. In the second book, Gan Eden (1354; “The Garden of Eden”), he...

thesis on prophecy

...that claim, as well as expositions of the nature of prophecy that, without dealing directly with Muhammad’s claim, could be taken to undercut it—as in the case of Maimonides’ The Guide for the Perplexed). Nonetheless, Islam too was understood to contribute to the fulfillment of the divine purpose. From the late medieval period onward, the intellectual engagement...

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.